fluent presents a sculpture and reading performance by Kevin Gallagher.

Originated from a found manual of instructions, the reading, Statue Care and Rearing, is drawn from complex shipping instructions for transporting live mantis shrimp, a sensitive and territorial creature. The corresponding Untitled sculpture takes the form of piled storage boxes, in which the artist inserts pickling sculptures.

Assembling the sculpture and the text as a complex organism, the works address perishable goods and living organisms as no longer dissociated but mutable bodies. Sensitive life forms require care in their handling, their movement, their preservation. This feeling of care pervades the works: carved carrot bodies rest in a home-made pickling solution; detailed shipping instructions are composed by a mantis shrimp enthusiast. By transposing the subject of ‘mantis shrimp’ to ‘statue’, the text creates an imaginative space within the darkness of the shipping container. In the sculpture and reading, we witness sensitive bodies preserved in transitory habitats.